FAQ - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
ROUTE RASM PERFORMANCE REPORT
3) WHAT CARRIERS ARE INCLUDED?
4) A CARRIER SEEMS TO BE MISSING?
5) HOW WAS PRORATION DONE, IS ROUTING AVAILABLE?
6) THE RESULTS DIFFER FROM THE AIRPORT RASM REPORT?
7) WHERE CAN I FIND THE CARRIER NAMES FROM THE IATA CODE?
8) IS THIS DATA A QUARTER OR A YEAR?
9) DOES THIS INCLUDE CONNECTIONS?
10) IS THIS DATA ONE-WAY or BOTH WAYS?
12) ONE AIRLINE HAS A HIGHER SCORE WITH WORSE NUMBERS?
13) IS INTERNATIONAL INCLUDED?
14) WHAT DOES SPONSORED BY MEAN?
16) CAN I REMOVE MY NAME FROM THE SPONSOR LIST?
17) MY NAME WAS SKIPPED ON THE SPONSOR LIST?
18) IS THERE A MINIMUM NUMBER OF DEPARTURES TO APPEAR?
2) HOW DO I READ IT?
The columns of data are:
MKT = Market: This is the other airport on the route from the airport featured in the report. For example, if the report was AUS ROUTE RASM PERFORMANCE and the MKT was DFW it would be results for AUS-DFW. The data is bi-directionally averaged, so it includes both AUS-DFW and DFW-AUS in this example.
AL = Airline: The IATA Airline Code of the marketing airline. The marketing and operating airlines have been joined using the Marketing and Operating carrier in the DOT On-Time data reporting. Only carriers reporting DB1B and On-Time data are included.
Score = Score of Route Performance: Performance is shown among five groups compared only against that airline's other routes.
GREAT (Green) is the best 20% of the airline's RASM results (80% to 100%).
GOOD (Blue) is the next 20% group of routes (60-80%).
FINE (Gray) is the middle group which indicates average performance among that airline's routes (40-60%).
WEAK (Orange) indicates the results for the route are below average for that airline (20-40%). It is important to note that a WEAK route may still be profitable depending upon how profitable the airline as a whole was during that quarter.
POOR (Red) is the lowest group and indicates the route is probably at some risk of being cut (0-20%).
1 Yr Ago = Score Compared to One Year Earlier: For example, if this quarter a route had a score of GOOD (the 2nd highest score) and in the same quarter one year earlier it had a score of POOR (the 5th highest score) an icon showing a Green 3 would indicate the route improved (Green) by three positions (POOR to GOOD, 5th to 2nd). If a route declined in its score versus a year earlier the color shown is Red rather than Green. A Black dot indicates no data was available in the pror period or too few flights were operated to compare.
2 Yr Ago = Score Compared to Two Years Earlier: This works the same way as 1 Yr Ago, but if the current year was 2022 Quarter 1, the comparison would be against 2020 Quarter 1...2 years earlier.
1 Yr ASM = Capacity Compared to One Years Earlier: If an airline had ASMs if 10,000 in the current quarter and 20,000 in the quarter one year earlier, this would show -50% indicating the decline by half in capacity from the year earlier period.
RTs = Roundtrips: This is the average number of roundtrips per day over the quarter averaged between directions. 1 daily roundtrip in each direction would show 1.0. A minimum of 10 departures in the market during the quarter is required to appear in this report.
LF = Load Factor: This is the ratio of seats filled with passengers calculated by taking RPMs/ASMs.
LCL Fare = Local Fare: Local is defined as a passenger whose trip did not include a stop or connections along the way. For AUS-ABQ it is the fare only of passengers traveling AUS-ABQ and ignores passengers who continued on to other flights on either end. This is the average one way fare paid for them from DB1B.
LCL % = Percent of Local Traffic: Local is defined as a passenger whose trip did not include a stop or connections along the way. For AUS-ABQ it is the fare only of passengers traveling AUS-ABQ and ignores passengers who continued on to other flights. This is the ratio of passengers that were local compared to all onboard.
Leg Fare = Average Prorated Fare for All Traffic: This fare incorporates both the local fare and a portion of the fare paid on connecting or through passengers. Using industry standard proration passengers who continued on have their fare split and averaged along with the local passengers to generate a Leg Fare.
3) WHAT CARRIERS ARE INCLUDED?
As of May 2023, any carrier filing scheduled service that appears in DB1B as a reporting carrier should appear. Prior to May 2023 postings, any carrier that filed origin and destination data in DB1B and Ontime Data is included.
4) A CARRIER SEEMS TO BE MISSING?
As of May 2023, any carrier filing scheduled service that appears in DB1B as a reporting carrier should appear. Prior to May 2023 postings, only carriers listed in DB1B and Ontime Data are shown..
5) HOW WAS PRORATION DONE, IS ROUTING AVAILABLE?
As of May 2023, routing information from the raw DB1B file posted online is used for routing information. Prior to May 2023, a QSI model was run for each day of the period using OnTime schedule data to split each airline's traffic among the possible routings. That split is then applied to the DB1B traffic by airline. Proration is accomplished via industry standard root of the miles method. Since international DB1B data is not allowed to be released on the internet, international connecting prorate fare levels are assumed to be the same as domestic.
6) THE RESULTS DIFFER FROM THE AIRPORT RASM REPORT?
Effective in May 2023, the methodology for this report changed, that methodology will be applied to the Airport RASM report later in 2023. Prior to that the Airport RASM report does not use the same methodology as this report and will differ, particularly in hubs.
7) WHERE CAN I FIND THE CARRIER NAMES FROM THE IATA CODE?
The Flashback Post FAQ has a number of airline codes for several periods HERE.
8) IS THIS DATA A QUARTER OR A YEAR?
It is a single quarter. Because profit performance can be very seasonal I only compare to the same quarter in prior years as well.
9) DOES THIS INCLUDE CONNECTIONS?
Yes, while the Airport RASM report bases revenue on fares only to and from that city coupled with total traffic, this report prorates fares across connections.
10) IS THIS DATA ONE-WAY or BOTH WAYS?
Both directions are added together and averaged.
12) ONE AIRLINE HAS A HIGHER SCORE WITH WORSE NUMBERS?
The scores are specific to that airline. If one airline generates great revenue numbers system-wide and another generates much lower revenue numbers relative to capacity the same RASM could generate vastly different Scores. At an LCC a route with a $150 Legfare and 95% LF may be GREAT, but at a legacy carrier with much higher fares on average across their network those same numbers may only generate a POOR result.
13) IS INTERNATIONAL INCLUDED??
International routes are not included, however, international feed traffic on domestic flights is included. Passenger counts for domestic flights include all traffic regardless of connecting destination, but no revenue data is reported for the international connect passengers. To fill in that gap, missing international connect passengers are assigned the same connecting prorate fare as domestic connecting passengers. It isn't a perfect solution, but there are no other alternatives since international DB1B data is not freely available to the public.
14) WHAT IS SPONSORED BY?
As a way of saying Thanks, MOST/BUSINESS Tier members are thanked with a Sponsored By shout-out on this report.
15) CAN I SPONSOR A POST?
All MOST/BUSINESS Tier members will rotate into a sponsor position. If you want to do more message me!
16) CAN I REMOVE MY NAME FROM THE SPONSOR LIST?
The easiest way to do that is to change your DISPLAY NAME in your Patreon settings to a name that you are comfortable with. Patreon feeds that list directly and there is no way to remove members, but you can change your DISPLAY NAME to any non-offensive name you would like!
17) MY NAME WAS SKIPPED ON THE SPONSOR LIST?
When a post is cancelled or recreated it can skip to the next name on the MOST/BUSINESS Tier list. I apologize if your name was skipped, but rest assured it will come back up again before long.
18) IS THERE A MINIMUM NUMBER OF DEPARTURES TO APPEAR?
Ten operations or more in both combined directions must have occurred during the period to be included.
19) IS ANCILLARY REVENUE INCLUDED?
On this report it is not, but there is a good reason for that. Since the airline's route RASM is only compared to its own other routes there is no benefit to including Ancillary Revenue. Ancillary is not available by route, so it would need to be allocated across the network. Because of that it would not change the grading of the routes if it were added, so there is no point to including it. The only impact of not including it is that the shown average fares are low for airlines like Spirit, although accurate since ancillaries are not part of the fare.
20) WHAT CHANGES WERE IMPLEMENTED IN MAY 2023?
When the report was originally designed we did not realize that the DB1B Market data download version available from the Bureau of Transport Statistics included routing information and a serial number to merge it to the DB1B Ticket data. Discovering that detail also allowed the recent addition of Resident versus Visitor split on the ROUTE MARKET SHARE report.
With the addition of routing detail, we no longer need to use a QSI model to split out the routing for each airline's O&Ds which should improve the accuracy of the route level detail, although total revenue for the airline won't change so any revenue added to one route from more accurate routing information will also mean another route will see an offsetting decrease.
Because there is no need for a QSI model to generate results it also means that Ontime data is no longer needed to generate the schedule files for the QSI to run. That means that airlines which submit DB1B data, but not Ontime data that previously could not have ROUTE RASM data generated can now be added. That enables Breeze and Avelo to appear in the ROUTE RASM reports.
We also took this opportunity to improve error correction when things happen such as local traffic exceeding total onboard traffic in the reported data.